The Novelist Whose Inventions Went Too Far After the Afro-Cuban writer H. G. Carrillo died, his husband learned that almost everything the writer had shared about his life was made up—including his Cuban identity. READ THE ARTICLE ON THIS LINK
From TEXAS MONTHLY: The Story of Latoya Watkin’s PERISH
Watkins’s debut novel, Perish (Penguin / Tiny Reparations Books, August 23), revises and expands on that early novella. It tells the story of Helen Jean Turner, the dying matriarch of a Black family, and her descendants, many of whom are returning home to the fictional West Texas town of Jerusalem to say their last goodbyes. Helen Jean has suffered from […]
Three springs ago, I lost the better part of my mind. I remember it starting with my feet. I woke up one February morning in the South Bronx apartment I’d just moved into with my husband, and my feet were so swollen I could barely fit them into my roomiest sneakers. I called in sick […]
When Richard Wright sailed to France in 1946, he was 38 years old and already a legend. He was America’s most famous black writer, the author of two books hailed as classics the moment they were published: the 1940 novel Native Son and the 1945 memoir Black Boy. By ‘choosing exile’, as he put it, he hoped both […]
I often travel to places I’ve read about, and I like how the remembered story unfolds as I drive, at once moving toward a destination and returning to a memory. On this particular trip, I’m rememberingErnest J. Gaines’s The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, a novel that follows the 100-year life of Miss Jane, from her […]
Brand Yeezy To what extent can Kanye West continue to foreground the commercial components that make his art possible before we no longer consider him an artist at all? By Angela Flournoy What could we possibly not know about Kanye West? He has rapped, tweeted, blogged, and ranted about his feelings for years. His wife’s […]
